I had grown up as a feature writer, and basically my career had been in The National Lampoon and as a magazine editor, and I'd never been a reporter.

It is a law of governance that democracies have to spend themselves dizzy. Citizens of democracies can, after all, tell their government to give them things.

A hat should be taken off when you greet a lady and left off for the rest of your life. Nothing looks more stupid than a hat.

If I do, I say so. That's the only way out of that. If there are three words that need to be used more in American journalism, commentary, politics, personal life... it's the magic words "I don't know." I mean, there are certain basic principles, like the dignity of the individual and the individual's responsibility, and certain basic economic principles, like how when something costs less, more of it will be consumed... There are certain things that I feel pretty confident about.

[ I'm] humorist, I guess. Or really more of a reporter. A reporter who reports on funny things.

Germans respond well to lies. At least, they always have historically.

I arrived in the middle of a press conference - as boring a thing to sit through if you don't know the language as it is if you do.